Moving to Europe VI – Preserving & Using Your US Cellphone Number Abroad

Finally getting back to my Europe series of posts here, and this is going to be a very practical one.

When you’re moving abroad an item which many may not think about until it’s too late, is how to keep your US cellphone number. This may not seem important at first (I’ll just get new local number and cellphone plan after I move, so why would I need it?) but there are actually many reasons you might want to do so:

There are many reasons to keep your US phone number when you move

Continuity – If you’ve been living in the USA for a while you’ll likely have had the same phone number for a long time. It’s the number you’ve used for your friends, your business, your online accounts (e.g. banks etc.) and who-knows-what-else, so it’s the number everyone knows.

Keeping it Local – Your US number is “local” which means your friends & family in the US can call it without incurring any international calling fees. It’s not that there aren’t other ways to avoid phone fees between friends & family when you live abroad (there are plenty, and I’ll cover them in a future post), but maintaining a local US number is easy, especially if you have elderly folk who are used to calling you that way.

2-step verification may involve a text to your US phone

Verification – Have you ever set-up 2-step verification on anything that involves getting a text to your cellphone? Or do you have accounts (e.g. banks) which rely on texts to your phone to verify things (e.g. suspicious charges, online transfers etc.). Well, if you lose your US number you obviously lose that option. There are usually workarounds, but often it’s a major hassle & you might have delays getting things done. Keeping your US number active & working while you’re abroad is very, very handy for these things.

It’s nice not to have to worry about missing calls to your old phone

Not Missing Anything – You might get calls from the US after you leave that are important. Maybe from your former doctor, or an extended family member or an old friend, your bank or something else. Even if you’re meticulous and try to update every phone number you can think of to your new international phone number, you may well miss something. Also some US-based organizations just won’t accept an international number in their system (try giving one to your local US doctor, for example), so keeping a US-based number that they can contact you with is good practice.

Oh and the other reason to do this? It only costs $20!!!!! YES, there’s only a one-time $20 fee to retain lifetime access to your US number, and once it’s done it’s FREE to maintain!

The Key Is Porting Your Number To Google Voice

The key to all this magic is transferring your current US cellphone number to Google Voice, and it’s super easy to do. You just need to make sure you do it BEFORE you cancel your US cellphone plan and WHILE you’re still physically in the USA.

TIMING TIP: My recommendation is to start your phone port about 7-10 days before you leave the USA. It typically only takes ~24 hours to complete the transfer of your number from your cellphone provider to Google Voice, but there CAN be delays*

You’ll need a current, active US cellphone number and a Google account login (if you don’t have one already). Then you’ll just follow these simple steps to port your number. Or, you can see how we did it below:

1/ Check Your Number Is Portable: The fist thing you need to do is check that your current US phone number is eligible for porting using this link: https://www.google.com/voice/b/0/porting?pli=1. Most cellphone numbers are, but you do need to check first.

Check your number is portable first

2/ Start The Porting Process: Using the same link as #1, the next step will be to start the actual porting process. As I mentioned above you will need to be within the USA to do completed this step (the system will check your computers’s IP address to verify your location). You will be asked to check a box that you understand there is a $20 (one-time) charge and then you must click the next button in order to go onto phone verification.

Accept the cost and then click on the next step

3/ Phone Verification: At this point Google will give you a verification code and then they will CALL YOUR US PHONE NUMBER. In order to complete verification have will have to answer that call and enter the code they’ve given you. So your US phone number must active and ready to do this.

Google will call your US number and you will need to enter a verification code

4/ Enter Your US Account Holder Info: Once phone verification is complete you will be prompted to enter your current US cellphone provider info (= where you’re porting the number from) including the account number, holders name & billing address, and the holders last 4 SSN.

You’re done! Just sit back and wait for the transfer to complete (~24 hours. You’ll get an e-mail when it’s done). Once the porting process is complete your existing phone will be “dead”, and all calls & texts to your US number will now go to Google voice instead. Most times this should automatically cancel your old cellphone plan, but definitely double-check. If the plan hasn’t automatically cancelled, now is the safe time to do so.

What If’s And Other Questions

*What If You Already Left The USA? You mean, like what happened to us, because Google Voice went down the week we flew out of the USA??? Well, then it becomes tricky. You’ll need to follow these steps:

Keep Paying For Your US Plan: If you want to keep your US number don’t cancel your US cellphone plan! You’ll need to keep paying for your US cellphone plan until you can figure out how to port your US number.

Get A VPN That Can Map Your IP Address To USA : Google only allows porting from within the US (it checks your computer IP address for location), so you will have to make it look like you’re still in the USA before you start the port process. Luckily there are lots of VPN providers who offer exactly this kind of service (e.g. NordVPN is great, although there are lots of other good options out there too). Once your VPN is active you can just follow the same porting steps I described above.

Make Sure You Can Receive The Verification Call: You’ll need to be able to receive a phone call on your US based number for step 3 of the porting process (again: your US cellphone plan must still be active to do this!). If your US plan doesn’t support receiving calls internationally, then your best option is to send your phone (or just your SIM) back to someone in the US who can receive the call & enter the authorization code for you. If you’re just sending your SIM make sure the receiving person has an unlocked phone they can use it in.

Once you’ve completed the porting request, you’ll just need to wait enough time for the port to complete before you check that your US plan is cancelled. In the end this is the process we went through and it worked out fine.

What If You Already Cancelled Your US Phone Service Plan? Unfortunately if you forgot to port your number out before you cancelled your US cellphone plan, this probably means you’ve lost it. There might be a grace period with your old carrier if you act quickly, so you may be able to re-instate your old plan and recoup your number (I’ve read of a select few successful accounts), but I wouldn’t count on it. If you’re in this situation it certainly doesn’t hurt to call your old cellphone provider and try.

What If You Already Canceled Your US Plan AND You’re Already Living Abroad? Well, you can’t get your old US number back, but if you really need/want a US number it IS actually possible to set-up Google voice with a new US-based number from abroad. It’s a bit of a hassle that requires jumping through a few hoops, but it’s do-able. Follow the steps in this post: Use A Google Voice Number From Outside the US

Using Your US Number While Abroad

OK. You did the port and you got your US number into Google Voice. Now what? How do you actually use it while living abroad. Well there’s 2 main ways:

Use Google Voice As-Is

If you just want to send/receive texts or receive voicemails (i.e. you do not need to make or answer phonecalls from your US number) then I’d recommend sticking with Google Voice the way it is. The good thing is that once you’ve ported your number, you won’t need to do anything additional to set it up.

You can see all incoming calls, texts & voice messages on the Google Voice website. You just can’t make or answer calls.Texts and voicemails are automatically transcribed and sent to your e-mail inbox too!

Any texts or voicemails sent to your old US number will be received and stored on Google Voice and you can see those messages on the Google Voice website. In addition (here’s the super snazzy part) those messages will be automatically be transcribed and sent to the e-mail address associated with your Google account.

Sweeeeet!

So if someone texts your US number, you’ll get that text as an e-mail in your inbox.

If someone leaves you a voicemail on your US number, that voicemail will be automatically transcribed into text form and then you’ll get that through your e-mail too (you can then go online to Google Voice to hear the actual voicemail recording if you wish).

If that’s all you ever need then you’re good to go. You can get texts, you can answer texts (via the web), you can see who tried to call you and you can receive voice mails.

However if you want to make a call using your US number or answer calls made to your US number while you’re living overseas, then you’ll want to complete one more step.

Link Google Voice To Google Hangouts & Use That Instead

The one tricky thing about using Google Voice internationally is that you can’t actually make or answer phonecalls with your old US number, at least not if you’ve signed-up to a local phone plan and now have a foreign phone number.

Hangouts is free & can be used on Android or iPhoneWith incoming call ring enabled, your phone will physically ring whenever you get a call to your old US number

You see in order to make or answer calls through your Google Voice number you need to link it to another working US phone number (Google Voice then basically just forwards everything through that number). You CANNOT link it to an international phone number, only US-based numbers. So then what do you do?

The work-around is to link Google Voice to Google Hangouts and use that instead. The good news is it’s super easy to do!

Just download the Hangouts App on your phone or iPad (you can also access Hangouts via on the web on your computer), then link your Google Voice number and finally turn on ringing (= “ring on incoming phone calls” under settings). Now you can make calls from Hangouts AND Hangouts will ring on your phone and allow you to answer whenever someone calls your US number!

Once you’ve done this you will be able to do absolutely everything through Hangouts using your old US phone number. So you’ll be able to send and receive texts, you can send and receive phone calls & voicemails, AND you’ll be able to answer calls and talk to your friends & family back home. Plus you can do it all for FREE**!

**NOTE 1/ Hangouts calls received from any number are free, and Hangouts calls made from abroad back to US & Canadian numbers are free from all countries where Hangouts is available (some countries like China, Mexico, UAE etc. do not allow you to use Hangouts, but all European countries do). Hangouts uses either WiFi (if you’re connected to a WiFi network) or your cellphone data plan (if you’re not connected to WiFi) to do its business, so as long as you’ve got data you’re good to go.

NOTE 2/ When you link-up Voice & Hangouts this way, you’ll still get a copy of texts & voice mails on your e-mail. They’ll simply be transcribed & sent to the e-mail associated w/ your Google account.

Our Experience?

We’ve been happily using Google Hangouts on our iPhones/Pads since we arrived in Europe and it’s been great. Paul’s family is able to call his old US cellphone number and keep in touch that way. Plus we’ve been able to get verification texts, bank-related calls and anything else we need from our old US number. Getting a copy of all our texts/voicemails through our e-mail has been a nice bonus.

The only gotchas? We’ve found Hangouts to be rather “laggy” on connecting (it takes a while after you answer the phone call before you actually get connected). Also, since Hangouts relies on your WiFi or data network, the quality of calls you get really depends on how fast that network is.

For the most part however it’s been flawless. It’s great that we’ve been able to keep our US numbers (we’ve both had them for years and years and really didn’t want to lose them), and it’s even better that we don’t actually have to pay anything to do so. It’s a simple process that I recommend everyone do before they move abroad.

Note/ I deliberately haven’t covered cellphone plans (either traveling with a US plan or getting a foreign plan) or other international calling methods like Skype or Facetime in this post. That’ll be a topic for another day….

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This is incredibly valuable data. Quick question. Is Google voice a good option for people traveling overseas on business or pleasure? I don’t want to pay for an overseas plan while traveling o overseas and am ok with just doing text. What’s your experience on this front?

If you’re texting family & friends then IMO the best option is to try and get everyone on the same platform. For example Skype, or Hangouts or WhatsApp. If everyone downloads it, you can all text (and even CALL) back and forth without incurring any fees at all. You just need to be on the App and have access to WiFi (you connect on your phone to WiFi at the hotel, or a coffee shop etc.) when you call or text. For short stints and staying connected with good friends & family that’s what I’d recommend.

If you’re looking for a way to access all calls or texts made to your US phone while abroad (from anyone), then it’s a bit different. I wouldn’t recommend porting your number to Voice the way I did since you’ll lose it from your cellphone If you do that. Instead I’d recommend signing-up for a “dummy” Google Voice number (free), linking it to your US cellphone number (free) and linking that to Hangouts (also free).That way, you can do everything through Hangouts. As long as you’re connected to WiFi any texts to your US number will show up on Hangouts, plus you can also text back via Hangouts too. Make sense?

Wow! I have had a Google voice phone number for about 5 years that I use all the time. I usually answer my phone through the speaker on my laptop. I also use Google Chrome. It also ties to my cellphone. I got it as soon as Google made it available. I got to pick any area code and phone number I wanted. I didn’t have to pay anything at the time. Now I am so glad I got it, just in case. Thank you for all this information. My husband and son are both computer geeks, thank goodness.

Yup, in the US you can link Google Voice to your US cellphone, and it all works nice and seamlessly like that. In Europe we can’t tie it to our cellphone (Google Voice only links to US numbers), but that’s where Hangouts comes in and saves the day. With Hangouts I can answer calls on my phone, or pad or PC like you do. It’s quite nifty.

Again! Canadians get ripped off. Trying to activate this and get the message “Couldn’t create a google voice account.” What’s up with that. When we travel in the US, we have to pay our cell phone provider $40 a month plus taxes, we get unlimited calls and texting but VERY limited data. This is really annoying.

Did you use a VPN to get yourself on a US IP before you started the process? Google Voice will only activate from the US, so if you’re trying to get it done out of country, you need a VPN to mask your IP. Read the details in my “What Ifs” section above for more.

Also is there a specific reason you want a US number with Google Voice? Since your Canadian cellphone plan gives you unlimited calls while you’re in the US, then I’m not clear that you’re gaining much by activating a number in Voice. It won’t get you any data access while you’re traveling. It’s simply a US phone number for texting and calling.

Well, I’ve done it – read all your blog posts! A TON of great information to guide our RV adventure (hopefully to start next year) (and maybe some Europe time) after I retire. Looking forward to more Europe posts! Now, what to do with all my spare time now that I can’t binge on Nina posts? Oh yeah, clean out closets and get the house ready to sell! Hope you’re enjoying France, and prayers for your Dad and his treatments.

Wow! I am SO impressed you read them all. I’m behind in my writing here in Europe. Between my sisters birth (just recently) and settling in, I haven’t had much time to sit down. It’s a good problem to have I guess 🙂

This post is a God send. I recently moved to Germany. Just got off the phone with my US Cell Carrier intending to simply choose a lower plan and keep my US number alive in addition to my new German number. I was then informed that they would cancel my number if I was permanently living abroad even if I was willing to pay added roaming charges. (So much for my dual Sim concept). Fortunately I’ll be back in the States on vacation in a month and will complete this process then. The Ironic thing is my new Carrier is Deutsche Telekom. The Parent Company of T-Mobile my US carrier. You’d think they would have enjoyed keeping my business on both sides of the Atlantic.

Hi Nina! This post is super helpful, and I got pretty excited about porting my current US phone number to Google Voice for use while we spend significant amounts of time out of the US. However, I am a bit concerned now, given some information I’ve received lately. I was hoping to use Google Voice as is, just to receive the odd voice mail while in another country, and not have it actually forward to a new phone number. However, from what I read, this is really not allowed by Google and will eventually come back to bite me. From another forum, I’ll quote:

“Google Voice Terms Of Service (TOS) require that you maintain a valid forwarding phone on your Google Voice account at all times. You can get around that requirement for short periods of time, but Google Voice does check all accounts on a rolling basis and eventually, Google Voice will notice that your account has no outbound activity and no forwarding phone and disable your account until you verify a working forwarding telephone.

You also run the risk of having your ported in phone number revert to the carrier of original issue. I’m not sure how long an inactive phone has to sit unused before that would happen but eventually, your original carrier would get their number back for reissue to a new customer. ”

Is there any way around this problem if I don’t currently use Google Hangouts? I don’t know the first thing about using that, though I suppose it’s not Rocket Science. If I forward the GV number to Hangouts, will I be able to receive voice mails or texts received at my old number? I am really not looking to make or receive actual calls using this service, just messages, and I will call, email, or text back, if needed, on my new phone.

Very good catch! I actually had not seen those TOS details, so that’s good info. I honestly don’t know (for sure) if using Hangouts solves the problem with the TOS, but it seems to be doing the job for us. Hangouts is super easy to use too. And yes you’ll get all your voicemails and texts thro Hangouts the same way you would directly through Voice. It’s just another outlet for the same info.

I’ll read around some more and see if I can fully resolve that TOS detail.

Another update. Hangouts does seem to be the key here. This is from a Google Voice Q&A forum that I found today:

“With the introduction of Google Hangouts’ ability to place and receive calls via a Google Voice telephone number, the requirement to maintain a 10-digit forwarding phone number with Google Voice was removed.”

So yes, linking to Hangouts seems to be the way to go. Just download the Hangouts App on your phone, or pad (or use it thro the web on your PC), link it to your Voice number and you should be good to go.

Thank you so much, Nina! This helps immensely as both my husband and me were looking to use Google Voice to handle our current US phone number while living in Mexico. I can’t thank you enough for easing my mind; I am sure we can figure out Hangouts. 🙂

I am moving to London next week, and found this post very valuable. I went ahead and ported my number to Google Voice. Unfortunately, simply linking Hangouts does not seem to be working. Phone does not ring on incoming calls even though I set it up to accept incoming calls per your instructions. And when I attempt to make an outgoing call, it is forcing me to enter a valid US forwarding number. But, I don’t have one anymore, since I just ported it to Google Voice! Was hoping to simply use Hangouts as you suggested but that alone does not seem to be enough — any suggestions?

Hi, I was wondering if this would still work if you choose to get a US number offered by Google voice rather than porting your current number? I’m thinking of ditching my current number and going with a virtual one that GV provides so I can save $20, and still have access to a US based number while abroad. Thanks!

You still need a real US number (not from voice) to activate Google Voice. It will call that number during the activation process to confirm the process. Kind of a catch-22, but that’s how it functions. There are other ways to get a number for this (you do not have to port your existing phone) if you use a service like Callcentric. But this number must remain on the account.

I would like to know- Once I return back to the US, how can I transfer my phone number back to my Verizon (my carrier)?
I will only be away for 6 months, and my goal is to keep my US phone number while I’m away (without paying Verizon) so that I can use it when I return to US!
I will likely be getting some foreign SIM cards while I’m away, so it will be good to still have my US phone number to be working as well.

Also, once I start the porting process 7-10 days before I leave, i understand that after the number is ported my cell phone plan will be canceled. That means I will not have cellular data for 7-10 days, correct? That seems like a long time to be without data (I live in the city with a job that needs data on a daily basis!)

Yes you can port your number back to a carrier once you return (see this link -> https://support.google.com/voice/answer/1065667?hl=en ) but, as you mentioned, you will lose your cellular data on Verizon as soon as the number is ported out to Google Voice. Actual porting only typically takes 24 hours, so you could try and wait to port until right before you leave, but then you risk not being able to complete if you run into any issues or delays. That’s what happened to us (porting was “down”for the 4 days before we left) which is why I recommend 7-10 days ahead, just to be safe. However if it ports right away, you will be without data for quite a while.

One option would be to buy a pre-paid data card to use for the last week of your stay in the US. That might “tide you over” for those last days after you port.

Another option, if you’re only going away for 6 months would be to put your Verizon plan on hold (suspend the account). I believe you can do this for up to 180 days. Then you can just reactivate your plan when you get back to the USA. Of course your US phone number won’t be usable while in suspension so this idea may not meet your needs.

I did the process above, but unfortunately, when I try to make calls on my iPhone 7 google hangouts app over wifi, it gets stuck on “calling..” and then I get an error message and a “called failed”. The error message is “Call was disconnected from the server. Please ensure you are connected to the internet.”
The calling works fine in Google Chrome on my laptop over wifi, so not sure what the issue is here.
Would you happen to have any experience with this?
I know you’re not a Google Tech Support, but I thought I’d check and see just in case!
I tried to delete and redownload the app on my iphone, but that didn’t fix it.

Oh dear no, Eric. We’ve not seen that problem. I Googled it, and it seems like it’s an issue that crops up every now and then (there’s a few support tickets on Google Hangouts forums), but I couldn’t find a specific solution. If I see anything I’ll let you know.

This has to be one of the most helpful articles I’ve read. It was a huge solution for me and my husband as we’re about to live abroad around the world for an undetermined amount of time but wanted to stay connected to home. Now that we’ve done it and ported our numbers (exactly as described above!), we’re thinking it probably would have been more cost effective to do this ages ago! We could have saved lots of money and just paid for prepaid data only cards and still get all our calls and texts through Google voice/hangouts! What a game changer! Thank you so very much for sharing!

Awesome! Do let me know how it works out for you. I’d recommend linking to Hangouts and using that, just to be on the safe side (see the comment above about forwarding numbers). We’ve been running this way for the past 5 months and are very happy with it.

We’re still in the states for a few weeks and wanted to test it out once our Verizon plan ended. We ported the numbers to Google Voice, set up Google Hangouts, and we’ve been getting all of our calls and texts. I love that even if you don’t have service, you still know you had a missed call. Never had that with regular carriers if there was no service or we were in airplane mode! Our phones came unlocked so we were able to buy a simple mobile sim card for $10 and an unlimited data plan for $50, which is about half what we were paying for 4 gigs of data with Verizon! It’s crazy we weren’t doing this sooner! We’ve been getting our calls and texts just fine to our number through Hangouts. It seems like it’ll be a breeze when we’re abroad! Thank you so much!

I agree, great post and very detailed, so it may be me that’s missing this one detail. I’ve read through all the comments and only the last one eludes to needing a simple mobile sim card with unlimited data for receiving and making calls/texts off Wifi through Google Hanhouts. So, here’s my situation, I’m already over in Spain, but bought NordVPN, because I need it for work, so I’m going to use it to setup the Google Voice acct, then port over my current cellphone number, which will end my current cellphone calling and data plan with Tmobile. After this point, do I just take my old SIM card out of my phone and buy a new Prepaid or simple plan with unlimited data and when I’m using Google Hangouts off of Wifi it will default to that plan? I’d think, this way I could use my phone locally here in Spain too, with the number attached to the new SIM card, right? I haven’t shopped for the SIM card here yet, but was Preeth saying it costs $50 per month for the unlimited data??

There is no specific need for a SIM with unlimited data (it was simply the SIM that the other commenter happened to have). Any SIM with a data plan should work. Also when you use Hangouts over WiFi it’ll use whatever WiFi network you’re connected to (not your SIM).

Lastly no, you cannot attach an international number to Google Voice. It only works with US numbers. So, while in Europe you can only make and receive calls with Hangouts either over WiFi (if you’re connected to a WiFi network) or over your cellphone data plan (if you’re not connected to WiFi). There is no connection or forwarding to your European phone number.

Thank you for this very helpful and informative post! I have one question (and forgive me if I’ve missed something).

What do you do for when you return to the US to visit? Do you get a prepaid, data only SIM card plan with a US carrier, and use google voice with your old number? Or some other voice+data pay as you go plan where you can use your old number?

I’m living in France now, so I’ve got a French SIM with a data plan that I can use while I travel, both across Europe and USA. So when abroad, I either use Hangouts (with my US number) on my phone through that, or connect to free WiFi and use Hangouts through that.

So basically I keep everything in Hangouts when I travel. You can port your number back out to a US cellphone plan, but that would make no sense for a short visit.

Thank you so much for the post! I am moving to Sweden in a few months and was endlessly searching online on how to keep my US phone number. I do have a question, and I hope it hasn’t been answered already and I have missed it, but what happens if your number is attached to a family plan and you are the only one moving abroad? Does it cancel only your line or the whole package???

That is a good question, and no it has not been answered yet. If you port from a family plan, only your number will port and the plan will remain active for the rest of the family. The reason I know that for sure, is because that’s what we did! We ported both our numbers from a family plan. The rest of our family is still in US and still on the plan.

Oh I should add, neither of us were the owners of the family plan when we ported (we were simply members). I honestly don’t know if that makes a difference, but if you’re the primary owner of the plan, then I’d transfer the ownership to someone else in your family before you port, just in case.

Awesome! I am not the owner of the family plan, that would be my dad and he is staying in the US. Thank you for the reply and all of the good information! I hope you are enjoying France! I lived there for a year when I was in high school. It was so beautiful!

Hello, I am in Budapest and able to receive international calls on my American SIM with Sprint WiFi calling. I have been trying to port my phone number from Sprint for days with no luck on Google Voice. I get this error where Google will not send the verification call to my phone number although my number is able to be ported (both according to Google and as told by Spring customer service). I have a VPN as well so my computer’s IP address is coming from America. I even had a friend in the US log into google for me and try it too but still the same result of “we are unable to call” error message prevails.
Any chance you guys can offer some advice? I much rather not send my SIM back to America when I have been receiving and dialing international calls with no issues.

I used a Nordvpn app to get a US IP, before I started the process. So I masked my IP and everything worked perfectly. When I bought my subscription, I used this discount code nordvpn.org/3yoffer so maybe it will be necessary for someone else.

Thanks for the great article! We will be spending 6 months this year in Europe and this sounds like the perfect fix. I was wondering if you had any experience or can compare porting with Google voice vs. Google Fi. I am stuck with Verizon as well but was initially looking into a cheap, pay-as-you-go plan to keep my number active and forward it to Google Voice. Now I have seen Google Fi and while it has some cons, it would appear to be easier. Thoughts?

Google Fi is definitely easy to use. I have good buddies that have been traveling around EU with it for the past year or so. It’s a different concept than Google Voice since it also gives you a data package that you can use in any country you visit. So, you don’t have to think about data when you travel either. If you’re looking for an easy “full service” solution I think it’s a great way to go.

First of all thanks for taking the time to answer to all of our questions. I’m in Spain and I already ported my number before coming to Spain and I am able to make and receive calls but I am not able to call any 1(800) numbers, it says “invalid phone number”. I need to call 1(800) numbers daily because of my job.

In the article it says that calling is free to any country with Hangouts allowed. Isn’t there a international fee charged based on which country you are calling? A per minute charge? I saw on the google voice page a listing of rate charges. Thanks!

Yeah this is disappointing news. The only upside of the article is that it looks like Google Voice will remain active (for now), even tho’ Hangouts is planned to phase out. If that’s the case we’ll still be able to keep our US numbers and receive voice and text calls, but we’ll lose our ability to make outgoing calls, at least from abroad. I don’t know of a reliable alternative at this point, but hopefully something else will come out fill in the gap. We’ll just have to wait and see how it all pans out.

Hello, thank you for this informative post! Since you’ve most obviously done your research and have experience in implementation, I was wondering if you can comment on this scenario: I am moving to Europe, I wish to keep my US number, and I will also get a local number in Portugal where I will be living. The catch is, I will be frequently coming back to the US for work (I am a photographer and will service my us clients for as long as I can) – perhaps 4-5 times per year for a couple of weeks. During those times, I will need to be able to use my us phone number in the US. I recently bought an iPhone XS that has the dual sim feature (one real sim, one esim) so I am hoping that will be helpful. While I am in the US, I will also need some way to utilize my Portuguese number.

Since you have some experience in this, what do you think might be a workable solution for me?

You might want to look at Google Fi. You’ll be able to use this both in USA and Europe, so it could be an easy (and pretty inexpensive) solution. In addition, you could also get a local SIM & number in Portugal with a service that allows you to use it abroad. That way, you have both…

thank you for the super helpful post. I’m wondering one last thing: do you know how this would affect one’s Whatsapp number? I’m alreadybusing a west african sim card where I live but my whatsapp number has remained the same, I worry that this might change somehow if I port the number? what was your experience? did you change your whatsapp number ti your french one? or did you manage to keep your whatsapp with the US number?

My WhatsApp is my French number. That’s the SIM I have in my phone. You won’t be porting your West African number (you can only port US numbers) so it shouldn’t affect anything on that side. Just put your West African SIM back into your phone after you’ve ported your US one.

Hey thank you this is incredibly helpful. Just so I have this right: If I port my US number, it will drop my current carrier and I will be without data. Then I can go to my destination country (in this case, Japan), and get a new sim and replace my US sim, and the new sim will work properly as expected. There’s no clash between Google voice and the sim card, because Google voice just runs on data, right?

Also, does that mean the old US sim is more or less useless? Or do I hold onto that for some reason?

When you put a new sim in your american phone, you need to make sure it is unlocked or you can’t use it with a different carrier/abroad. My husband and I had ATT Phones which we ported to google voice then since they were fully paid for we could unlock them to use with other networks/foreign sim cards but we had to request that online from ATT to be done. But once that was done we can use our foreign sim card with our originally ATT phones just fine.

Has anyone experimented with the dual Sim iPhone that offers a physical Sim slot and an eSim? I am moving to Europe in September. I need to keep my US number active as I will be traveling back to the US frequently for work for extended periods of time. I was thinking to get some sort of a prepaid account on my American side with an eSim, and use the regular physical sim for my European phone number. Has anyone tried this? The only catch in this plan is what to do with me American number rings when I’m in Europe and vice versa when the European number rings when I’m in America. As I don’t want to rack up a massive bill, I suppose I just don’t answer and then reply back with a text to start the communication. Thoughts?

For the most part yes. Pretty much all of my account 2-step verification texts have come through flawlessly on the ported number. There’s really only ONE I can’t get to work; Wells Fargo, and that’s because they’re a known issue with Google Voice. My advise is to do a search for your specific bank, using Google Voice as a 2-step number. If there’s an issue it should turn up in the search results.

Nina is exactly right. We used this incredibly helpful post prior to moving to Mexico and ported both of our US numbers to Google voice. Unfortunately, we bank with Wells Fargo and did not know that they had a restriction on texts to Google voice. Strangely, it has only been recently that they have started requiring two-step verification for our online access. My husband has been on the phone with them, and he is livid that he cannot access online banking any longer because of this restriction. All of our other financial and miscellaneous accounts work just fine. Wells Fargo is definitely the outlier here. We have been banking with them for many years but are probably going to find a new bank because of this issue. They also can’t figure out why my debit card doesn’t work here, while my husband’s does.

Oh Emily I’m so sorry you’ve run into this too!! This is kind of a hack, but if you have family members or friends that you trust, you can enter their phone number as the one on the account, then have the 2-step code sent to them and get through that way. Once your browser is approved once you shouldn’t have to do it again. At least that’s been my experience with Wells Fargo.

Thanks, Nina, My husband has considered doing that, but not sure it would only be a one time thing, based in our experience here. Since we have other issues with Wells Fargo, like their inability to fix my debit card issue, it looks like the time is ripe for a change.

Thank you for your excellent post, i went from 0 to 100 in 2 hours on google voice and how to use it from reading the blog and all the comments below !. I came across another link where someone lost their phone number due to inactivity on their account. An active use of google voice account involves sending/calling atleast once in the last 30 days. Just logging in and receiving messages may not be sufficient, more details in the link below.https://support.google.com/voice/thread/3637828?msgid=4938716
Since this blog seems to be a treasure trove for google voice and its usage i thought this information might help someone.

“Google Voice is not a mobile phone service provider, so you must set up a new mobile phone service plan (with your existing carrier or a new carrier) and request a new number.
You will need to add this new number to your Google Voice account as a forwarding phone in order to receive calls on your mobile phone.”

Can I use my original Google Voice number as the forwarding phone? I leave in about a week, so was planning on getting a prepaid sim with a new number, so I could use that, but that won’t work when I leave the country.

When you use Google voice it’s correct that your calls can only be forwarded to another US number (they cannot be forwarded to international numbers for example). But this doesn’t mean you can’t receive phone calls. They will simply go into the Google Voice app (or Goggle Hangouts app if you link it up)

There is just no forwarding. Once you move outside the US you cannot forward calls from Google Voice to another non-US phone number. But you can receive calls through the apps, either the Google Voice app (message only) or the Google Hangouts app (where you can also answer calls, if you link it up).

I think Google Voice has updated their requirements since this blog post, because you have to agree to that last option. On your step 2 above, it not only requires you to say you understand the part about the payment for the port, but also these two things:

“Your mobile phone service plan will be terminated when you port your number to Google Voice and your carrier may charge you an early termination fee.
Once porting is complete, you will not be able to receive calls to your mobile phone until you complete the following steps:
Google Voice is not a mobile phone service provider, so you must setup a new mobile phone service plan (with your existing carrier or a new carrier) and request a new number.
Once you’ve secured a new mobile service plan and a new number, you will need to add this new number to your Google Voice account as a forwarding phone.”

It seems like they’re taking more preventative measures to keep people from doing what you’ve outlined here…

Hmmm…I wonder. If that’s indeed a new requirement (to have a US mobile phone number linked to the account) that certainly changes things. There are several services that offer the ability to get a US number (e.g. CallCentric, TextPlus etc), but i don’t know if they’re compatible with Google Voice. If anyone has gone through this process recently and can verify, I’d love to hear back.

I just went through the process a few days ago and did not setup a new mobile forwarding number but just linked to Google Voice and Hangouts and am able to send and receive calls and texts as described in the original instructions. Perhaps Google is just trying to use strong language to discourage using Hangouts in this way, but it does seem to work just fine without any new mobile provider/forwarding number.

Ok, I also just ported my number over and it worked fine without an additional forwarding number. I think they’ve added that language so people don’t get angry when they realize they lose their original phone service.
The process was very easy. The port finished in 1 day and even though they warn you that you may not be able to access texts for 3 days, mine came through right away.
I did, however, purchase a pre-paid SIM card with a US number to be able to use data for my last week in the US. It didn’t make me connect that number with GV though.

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